by Steve Toltz
Then in an excited voice she started boring me with lengthy historical discourses HONESTLY what do I care if Louis XVI cut himself shaving the morning before he was guillotined? DO I REALLY WANT TO KNOW that an eyewitness at the stake where Joan of Arc was burned heard her speaking to God through the flames saying You can be pleased! I didn’t renounce you! & God saying back Stupid woman! What do I care what these people think? In the end while I like reading about history, something inside me rebels at being told it as if I were a slow-witted schoolboy who can’t be trusted to open a book.
As if sensing my boredom she suddenly went silent & her eyes fell to the ground & I thought there’s something about her that’s way too adhesive. Occurred to me if I didn’t get away that very second I’d be prying her off later with a bottle of mentholated spirits & a naked flame but she invited herself back to my place & I accepted.
She came in & stood in the center of the room in a way that made me think of cows & horses who sleep standing up. We made love in the bedroom in the dark, only sometimes the moonlight hit her face & I’d see her eyes were not just closed but squeezed tight.
Afterwards I watched her delight in tearing the plastic off a fresh packet of cigarettes as if picking daisies. She seemed to be relaxed now & as she smoked she talked passionately about everything her eyes fell on: ceilings & windows & curtains & faded wallpaper as if she’d been contemplating these objects for centuries & I was impressed by her knowledge & insights & asked if her intensity was European in character.
—No, it’s just me she said smiling.
Then she asked me if I loved her. I have waited a long time to say it honestly to Caroline, so I said no. I wanted to say more, to hurt her so she’d never come back, so I said Maybe you should leave now before your angular face cuts something.
She exploded, tearing me apart, critiquing everything about me. The subtext was clearly You don’t love me, tho in my defense should a person even need a defense for not loving someone, I had only known her two days.
She stormed out & I wondered what she wanted with my hollow life. Did she want to fill it & by filling it empty herself?
A Few Nights Later
This is how it works: She turns up uninvited & stands in front of me like those dozing cows & sometimes we make dinner & sometimes we eat it & sometimes we make love & sometimes she cries during it & I really hate that.
Often she takes my arm even as we walk around the apartment and as she speaks I keep losing track. Her English is fluent but often I have no idea what she means as if she’s expressing an abridgment of her own thoughts. Sometimes she tells stories laughing & while she does have a genuinely sweet laugh I can never work out for the life of me what’s so funny. She laughs at what I say too but at such odd moments, for all I know she might well be laughing at the word “the.” Her laugh is so enormous and sustaining I’m afraid I’ll be sucked into her mouth & wind up on the wrong side of the universe.
& she believes in God! I never imagined I would be with someone who believes—out of boredom I start a little argument about him, lazily throwing out the old chestnut If there’s a God why is there so much misery & evil in the world, & she bores me right back w/ God’s facetious smarty-pants answer to Job: Where were you when I created the heavens & the earth? THAT’S AN ANSWER?
I think her love for me has nothing to do with me except proximity—wrong place, wrong time. She loves me as a starving man loves whatever slop you put in front of him—not a compliment to the cooking but a testament to his hunger. I’m the slop in this analogy.
I want to be in love w/ her but not. I mean she’s v. beautiful especially when exclaims surprise or shock which is why I’m constantly jumping out at her but I can’t bring myself to love her. I don’t know why. Maybe because she’s the first nonrelated/nonmedical person to see me naked and vulnerable or maybe because she often seems so genuinely pleased simply to be with me—something inside me irritated at the idea that I have the capacity to make someone else happy just by existing when my existence has never done anything for me.
Yesterday she told me to call her Pauline.
—I fake a new name depending on what country I’m in, she said.
—So what are you telling me, Astrid isn’t your real name?
—It’s real if you call me & I answer to it.
—What’s your name?
—Pauline.
—No, that’s your French name. What’s your original name?
—There are no original names. They’ve all been used before.
I gritted my teeth & thought what am I doing with this nutcase? She talks too much & her crying frustrates then bores me & every day I grow more & more convinced she’s spent some time in a mental hospital & if not she should really think about it.
Blahblahblah
Tried closing myself off to her but it doesn’t do any good. Astrid or Pauline or whatever her name is has sneakily gone about understanding me by finding passages I’ve underlined in books. The other day she found this one in Lermontov: “I was gloomy—other children were merry and talkative. I felt myself superior to them—but was considered inferior: I became envious. I was ready to love the whole world—none understood me: and I learned to hate.” This one struck her especially as it was underlined circled highlighted & annotated with the words My childhood! Must be more careful in leaving soul-glimpses lying around like that.
Going to have to end this thing tho don’t know how when it’s my indifference that’s probably made her fall deeper in love with me—if I wanted to stay she’d probably throw me out on my ear but since she can tell I want to leave she doesn’t. She knows pleasure of pushing someone out the door is weakened considerably when w/ slightest nudge they break into a run.
An Ugly Day
Eddie’s back. Standing on Rue de Rivoli wondering if I stole just one hot roasted chestnut would the vendor bother chasing me for it when I had the weird sensation that I was being talked to in a language not of words but of energy and vibrations. Turned to see his wry Asian face peering at me—we stared at each other, neither moving. After looonng time he waved meekly & came through crowd to shake hand resting in my pocket. He had to pull it out. We chatted amiably & I was surprised to find how pleased I was to see a familiar face. Familiarity is important in a face. Don’t like Eddie’s face tho it’s clean & sparkling like a bathroom tile in a ritzy hotel. Don’t know how we found each other again—when I say goodbye to someone I expect it to stick. We walked in cold air & wintry light & Eddie told me he’s working down by the docks & asked me if I have a job & what have I been doing without one? I told him I’d found a woman because that’s the only external thing that has happened to me—some internal things have happened but they’re not his business & besides they’re incommunicable.
—What does she look like? he asked.
I’m not good at describing people & wind up sounding like an eyewitness in a police interview. She’s 5‘7” brown hair Caucasian…
Eddie said he’d like to meet her, trying again to worm his way into my life. I sense he is trouble, he’s too nice too genial too helpful too friendly. Trouble. He wants something. Don’t know why but I invited him to dinner then thought Now I’ll never get rid of him.
—Get rid of who? Eddie asked & as streetlamps came on I realized that somewhere along the way I’d developed habit of thinking out loud.
Possibly a Weekday
Changing my opinion of Eddie. Tho he’s constantly chilling me w/ his suspicious pursuit of friendship I like his contradictions—he’s a man at the peak of fitness who refuses to walk anywhere & he hates all tourists especially when they obstruct his view of the Eiffel Tower & while his clothes are always immaculately washed or dry-cleaned the man just doesn’t brush his teeth. What I like about him most tho is that he seems genuinely interested in everything about me & always seeks my thoughts & opinions & laughs at my jokes & every now & then actually calls me a genius. Who wouldn’t like a fellow like that?
A
strange threesome—Eddie & Astrid & me. At first when we ate dinner together you could see them freeze when I went to do something & it made me laugh to myself to see two grown people loath to be left in the same room. But soon quasi-friendship developed based on laughing together at my clumsiness & forgetfulness & lax attitude toward hygiene—amusement at my faults is common ground on which they both stand.
Sometimes three of us walk by the Seine. Buy cheap wine & bread & cheese & we talk about everything but I’m always impatient w/ other people’s opinions because I’m sure they’re just repeating something they heard somewhere or else regurgitating ideas fed to them in childhood. Look, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion & I’d never shut anyone down who was expressing one but can you be sure it’s really theirs? I’m not.
Catastrophe!
Tonight Astrid Eddie & me went to do laundry & to pass the time we tried to guess the origins of each other’s stains. Astrid thought every wine stain was blood & every coffee stain a splattering of tuberculosis. It was cold out & the window of the laundromat was all fogged up & we couldn’t see outside & Eddie was bent in front of the dryer lifting his clothes to his nose & sniffing each item with pleasure before folding it in a meticulous fashion as if preparing to send his underpants off to war.
—Hey, what the fuck? Eddie suddenly shouted as he sniffed his clothes his face contorting with each enormous whiff. There must have been something in the machine! These smell of shit!
He waved his garments under Astrid’s nose.
—I don’t smell anything.
—How can you not smell anything? Maybe you don’t smell what I smell but you must smell something.
—I don’t smell anything bad.
—Martin. You don’t smell shit?
I reluctantly took a sniff.
—It smells fine.
—Shit smells fine?
Eddie put his head in the clothes dryer sniffing. I was laughing & Astrid was laughing & it was a good moment. Then Astrid said I’m pregnant & Eddie hit his head on the inside of the dryer.
A baby! A fucking baby! A defecating pea-brained unformed biped! A horrible toothless homunculus! An incarnation of ego! A demanding serpent of need! A bald whining primate!
My life is over.
Help!
The topic of the moment: abortion. I am a passionate advocate. I hear myself in conversations w/ Astrid extolling virtues of abortion as if it were a new time-saving technology we can’t afford to live without. Like everything else her responses alternate between vague & fuzzy & downright mysterious. She says an abortion would be probably pointless—whatever that means.
Sex: the match that sets off human firework. In our loveless palace we’ve built a child. Suddenly being almost broke filled w/ new & daunting meaning compounded by the terrible discovery that I have not the heart/cunning/spine/amorality necessary to simply slip out of the country without a word and never return. To my horror principles have wormed their way into fabric of my being. I can’t recall a single instance of my parents showing strong moral fiber, but still it’s there inside me & I know I can’t leave Astrid. I’m stuck. Hopelessly stuck!
Much Later
Haven’t written for months. Astrid very pregnant. The fetus expands persistently. The invader draws near. My own private population explosion: spinal injury of my independence. Do I care if it dies?
The only good I can imagine from having a child: what I can learn from him, not from nauseatingly cute attempts at walking talking shitting which thrill every parent so they repeat their discoveries to you ad nauseam until you despise not only all children everywhere but even find you’re struck by sudden & irrational distaste for kittens & puppies. But it occurs to me I could learn from this child something about the nature of humanity—and if I accept Harry’s pronouncement that I am a born philosopher then this baby could be an ambitious philosophical project! What if I reared it in a cupboard without light? Or in room full of mirrors? Or Dali paintings? Apparently babies have to learn to smile so what if I never taught him or showed him laughter? No television of course no movies maybe no society either—what if he never saw another human other than me or not even me? What would happen? Would cruelty develop in that miniature universe? Would sarcasm? Would rage? Yes I could really learn something here tho why stop at one child? Could have a collective of children or “family” & alter variables in environment that will govern life of each one to see what’s natural what’s inevitable what’s environmental & what’s conditioning. Above all I will strive to raise a being that understands itself. What if I gave child head start by encouraging self-awareness at an unnaturally young age, maybe 3? Maybe earlier? Would need to create optimum conditions for flowering of self-awareness. This child will know a lot of solitude that’s for sure.
Yuck
If a girl Astrid wants to name the child Wilma for some reason—if a boy, Jasper. God knows where she got these names—all the same to me. If raised properly at a certain age he’ll/she’ll choose his/her own name to reflect who he/she thinks he/she is to feel entirely comfortable in his/her own skin—nothing worse than hearing your name called & feeling a dispassionate shudder or being left cold when you see your own name in print which is why most signatures are barely legible scrawls: the unconscious rebeling against the name, trying to smash it.
Worried about money. Astrid is too. She says she has been broke before in more countries than I can name in such poverty I cannot imagine but she’s never done it with a baby & she’s worried my inherent laziness will ensure our mutual starvation. Clearly criticism is the new fire that will not die. To have a child is to be impaled daily on the spike of responsibility.
Christ!
Idiocy (or is it insanity?) redefined in what I saw when I came home today: Astrid fixing the fuses in the kitchen while standing in a small puddle of water. I threw her over my shoulder and tossed her on the bed.
—You trying to kill yourself? I screamed.
She looked at me as if I had put my face on inside out & said in small bored voice If I could think of a really clever way to commit suicide, I would.
Suicide?
—How can you even think about suicide when you’re pregnant? I said surprising myself w/ pro-life thoughts.
—Don’t worry. Suicides often fail, anyway. When I was a girl my uncle jumped off a cliff and then waved from the bottom, his back broken. And my cousin took an overdose of pills and just wound up vomiting for a week. My grandfather put a gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger, and somehow managed to miss his brain.
—This is the first thing you’ve told me about your family!
—Is it?
—Did every member of your family attempt suicide at one point?
—My father never did.
—Who was your father? What was his name? What did he do? Is he still alive? What country did he come from? What country do you come from? What is your first language? Where did you grow up?
Why don’t you talk about anything? Why won’t you tell me anything?
Did something terrible happen to you? What…
A cold glaze came over her—she was receding fast. Her soul on an express train, back to nowhere.
Strange Days Indeed
Things w/ Astrid worse than ever. Icy wall dividing us. She does nothing all day, just stares out window or at own puffiness. On rare occasions she says anything her opinions are as bleak & sterile as mine were before I got sick of them. (I haven’t grown optimistic merely bored with pessimism so now I think light pretty thoughts for variety—sadly this is starting to get dull too—where next?)
I say We should get out a bit.
She says To do what?
I say We could go sit in a café & look at people.
She says I can’t look at people anymore. I’ve seen too many.
Life’s lost its appeal. Nothing I can suggest to break her from catatonic spell. Museums? She’s been to every one. Walks in the park? Already strolled under every color of the leaf.
Movies? Books? No new stories only different character names. Sex? She’s done every position untold times.
I ask her Are you sad?
—No, unhappy.
—Depressed?
—No, miserable.
—Is it the baby?
—I’m sorry. I can’t explain it, but you’re being so lovely, Martin. Thank you she says squeezing my hand & staring at me w/ her wide glassy eyes.
One night she cleaned the whole apartment & went out & returned w/ wine & cheese & chocolates & a fedora hat for me which I wore w/ no clothes on & it made her laugh hysterically & I realized just how much I missed her laugh.
But by morning she was miserable again.
Remembering how on the morning after our relationship began she’d drawn my face in pencil I went out & bought paints & a canvas spending all the money I had in vain hope that she might take out burning misery on blank canvas instead of on me.
When I unveiled the gift she cried & smiled in spite of herself then moved the canvas by the window & began painting.
That set off something new.
Each painting a rendition of hell, she has many hells & she paints them all. But hell is just a face, and it is just the face she paints. One face. One terrible face. Painted many times.
—Whose face is it? I asked today.
—It’s nobody. I don’t know. It’s just a face.
—I can see it’s a face. I said it was a face. I didn’t say Whose hand is that?
—I’m not a good painter, she said.
—I don’t know much about painting but I think it’s very good. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I want to know who the face belongs to.
—I painted it, she said. It belongs to me.
You can see there was no talking to her like you talk to a normal person. You had to be tricky.
—I’ve seen that face before, I said. I know him.
